History

By David Thompson, President, Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation

For almost 150 years, food cooperatives have had a stake in agriculture, farming and farmers. The relationship between the members of cooperatives and farmers has always been strong. Our shared program with the Davis Food Co-op and Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, of One Farm at a Time is just the latest action to directly link consumers to farmers.

Starting with Good Humus in rural Yolo County, One Farm at a Time will raise funds from cooperatives, their member, shoppers, suppliers, vendors and funders. We will use those funds to purchase either easements or the land itself to ensure that farmland will be perpetually saved and farmed organically by family farmers.

One Farm at a Time is a local co-op based program so to learn about what your co-op is doing please visit www.davisfood.coop or www.sacfoodcoop.com.

The "One Farm at a Time" program has received donations of: $5,000 from Lundberg Farms and Veritable Vegetable, $5,000 from Equity Trust and $3,000 from Equal Exchange as a result of the efforts of Paul Cultrera, General Manager of Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op and Jeff and Annie Main of Good Humus. The contributions and support keep coming in.

One Farm at a Time was initiated through the collaboration of; the Yolo County Land Trust, Tuleyome, Good Humus, the David Food Co-op, the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op and the Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation. We plan to help protect Good Humus as a permanent organic family farm by purchasing an easement on the entire farm. TPCF intends to replicate the idea in other parts of California and later throughout the country.

Let us for a moment go back in history to see what cooperatives and cooperators can achieve. The early objectives of the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844 were to purchase land and cultivate it for the members. In the 1860's representative of many co-ops met at Jumbo Farm to decide how to establish a wholesale cooperative that could ensure they received good quality farm products that were pure. Beginning then, cooperatives began to buy farm land to control the quality of the supply. Today, Cooperative Farming manages over 50,000 acres throughout Britain. Their program Grown by Us is very popular with British consumers.

Another program that cooperatives played a major role in was that of the founding of the Garden City Movement. Letchworth is the model town in England of 30,000 people where all the land in the city is owned by a nonprofit corporation. The 2,488 acres are a permanently protected greenbelt surrounding the town. Half of Letchworth's 5,300 acres is either farmed, parks or open space.

Clearly, cooperatives and cooperators made good decisions about protecting farmland over 100 years ago. Their vision still holds today. Through collaboration and the One Farm at a Time program our partnership is laying the groundwork to take actions today that will protect farmland tomorrow. Please join with us in our efforts.

For almost a half century, Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation (TPCF) has been supporting food cooperatives and other types of cooperatives. We pioneered the efforts to educate the consumer about the role of cooperatives in the economy and to bring about new innovations which bring working reality to good ideas. More than a decade ago we initiated the Co-op Farmland Trust to foster change. Through the 27 Cooperative Community Funds we host throughout the US we help food co-ops sustain organic farming.

TPCF uses its $2 million in assets to fuel each of the cooperative development funds in the US. A number of those funds help community groups purchase land to protect it for use as farming forever. TPCF is the largest provider of equity capital to cooperative development in the country. TPCF is the largest US co-op investor (over $300,000) in the dairy cooperative Organic Valley. TPCF investment in Organic Valley's program funds farmers who change from conventional to organic farming.

To make a contribution to our efforts visit www.community.coop/onefarmatatime or send a donation to the Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation, 216 F. Street, PMB 1844, Davis, CA 95616. To learn about our other activities please visit our web site at www.community.coop.

David J. Thompson is President of the Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation and can be reached at dthomcoop@aol.com or 530-757-2233. David was born in Blackpool, England to a family that was members of many cooperatives. His parents both worked for the Blackpool Cooperative Society and the society owned its own dairy farm.